


Restless

by untouchable



Category: This Way Up (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Phone Sex, Post-Canon, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:48:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23274235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untouchable/pseuds/untouchable
Summary: Áine wonders if Richard’s too old to know what sexting is. She decides to find out.
Relationships: Aine/Richard, Richard/Aine
Comments: 18
Kudos: 47





	Restless

**Author's Note:**

> I've found literally no fanfics anywhere for this pairing and that is a crime. I binged this whole show yesterday and went online and there was just...nothing. So I figured I had to fix that. Enjoy!

Richard laughs at her jokes now.

She doesn’t know when that started, or how it happened. But it has. Some of the ice around him has chipped away. 

He’s technically her boss, so she shouldn’t, but he holds her hand for a few moments before Etienne returns home from his sleepover, and Áine wants—

She wants him. She shouldn’t, but she’s not very good at _not_ feeling things. Maybe that’s her problem. She wants things too much, wants everything too much, forever lonely and longing for something she doesn’t dare name. And Richard, he doesn’t have the stuff to fix her, nobody does, but when he laughs at her jokes, deep and soothing, something unravels in her chest, just enough for her to breathe a little easier. 

Sometimes, while she’s teaching Etienne, Áine imagines she belongs there, there in that posh house with Richard and his son. She imagines a family. It’s a daydream she doesn’t allow herself to indulge in for too long while going about her day, but at night, when the darkness creeps in and she can’t sleep, Áine takes it out and wraps it around herself like an imaginary blanket. The sharp ache that’s always in her stomach usually lessens enough for sleep to come, but tonight is different. Tonight, she’s restless. 

She hasn’t heard from Richard since the phone call during Shona’s event on Friday night. It’s been two days. Two days and he hasn’t texted her, hasn’t asked her out yet, and she’s going to see him tomorrow when she goes over to teach Etienne, definitely, but Áine’s sick of this, sick of waiting. Sick of wanting.

She turns on her side, reaching for her cell phone in the drawer of her bedside table. Áine wonders if Richard’s too old to know what sexting is. She decides to find out. 

**ÁINE** (1:05am): what do a penis and a rubiks cube have in common?

She sends him a joke from the joke book he gave her, just to see if he’s even still awake. Is it bad that these supposedly “terrible” jokes are actually kind of funny to her? _Humor is one of your coping mechanisms_ , the therapist in rehab told her. But Áine tries not to think about that. 

Her phone starts buzzing. Richard’s name lights up the screen.

“Have you forgotten how to text?” she asks him after she answers. “Don’t be ashamed. Happens to my nan all the time.”

“Áine,” he says, say her name like _that_ , voice hoarse and rumbly from sleep, and it does something obscene to her insides. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Good on you for knowing the time, Richard. Why’d you ring me then?”

“You texted me first.”

“Ah, that I did. That I did. But I expected a text in return, you see, and not the honor of a phone call.”

“Right. I thought about texting you back, of course. But then I got to thinking and I figured that I had to hear the punch-line from your own mouth, that this must be a bloody hilarious joke for you to wake a man up in the early hours of the morning just to tell it to him.”

For a length of time, probably only seconds in reality, she’s sure that he’s cross with her, angry at the interruption to his sleep, until he continues. “I wanted to hear your voice,” he admits gruffly, a moment later. 

Áine smiles into her pillow. “So,” she says. Her voice is low, almost a whisper, even though Bradley is at Emma’s and there’s no one in the flat to hear her. “What do a penis and a Rubik's Cube have in common?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“They both get harder the longer you play with them! Worth ringing me up for, right?” she teases, fidgeting with a loose string on her blanket.

There’s a silence that ends in Richard clearing his throat.

“Oh, come on. It’s funny! Well, not really, but—”

“I think I just don’t get it. That’s all.”

She frowns. “You don’t—?”

“No,” he says slowly, carefully. She hears the rustle of sheets as he shifts in bed. “Why don’t you explain it to me, Áine?”

She hesitates. “Explain...explain it to you?”

She listens to him breathing, listens to the city-sounds drifting up from the streets below, and— _oh_. She gets it. 

“If you’d like.”

“Yes, I... _yes_.” She swallows. “Well. As you know, cocks get hard when you...touch them enough.”

“Really?” he sounds more relaxed than he had a second ago. “And how would you touch a cock, Áine?”

“With my mouth,” she finds herself saying. “I’d reach into your trousers and pull out your dick, pump my hand up and down until you got hard, and...and I’d take you into my mouth.”

“Fuck, Áine. On your knees?”

Her heart skips a beat in her chest before returning to a gallop. This is so much better than sexting.

“No,” she breathes. “On your bed, right where you are now. Can you picture me there with you, arse in the air as I suck you off?” 

Richard swears again, under his breath, and Áine tries to imagine him lying in bed, tangled in the sheets, chest rising and falling rapidly, maybe reaching under the covers to touch himself. Her stomach flutters, heat pooling in her lower belly. Is he touching himself while listening to her?

She asks him. 

He’s breathing heavily. So is she.

“Yes,” he simply replies. 

She bites her bottom lip to hold back a moan. Why is this the best sex she’s had in months, maybe years, and it’s not even sex? 

“Would you let me go down on you?” he asks.

Áine switches her cell to her left hand. “An interesting proposition. What would you do down there?”

“I’d put your legs over my shoulders and lick you until you’re wet enough—”

She guides her hand under the blanket, skimming the waistband of her panties. “I’m already wet.”

“—for me to slide two fingers into your cunt. Can you do that for me, now? Fuck yourself with your fingers?”

She’s so wet that there’s barely any resistance when she reaches down to insert two of her own fingers. His would be bigger, stretching her further. She chokes back a gasp. 

“Yes, I’m...I’m fingering myself,” she tells him.

“Good girl. If I were with you, I’d fuck you with my fingers and suck on your clit, would you like that?”

His breathing is getting more erratic, she can hear that he’s close, and the thought makes her dizzy. She pictures him here, between her thighs in the dark, gazing up at her as he eats her pussy. Áine licks her lips, picking up the pace. She adds another finger. It’s so tight that she moans loudly, pumping deeper.

“Richard, _please_ —”

His voice in her ear sends shivers down her spine. “Come for me, Áine. Christ, I...I wanna hear you, I’ve dreamed—Áine, come for me, love, I’m right here, come—”

And she does, with a strangled scream that she muffles by pressing her face into the pillow. A short time later, she hears Richard groan out a curse. If she hadn’t just orgasmed for the first time in weeks, she’d have felt horny all over again just from the noise he makes over the phone as he comes. 

“You still there?” 

“Yes.” She takes a deep breath to steady herself. “I’m afraid you won’t ever be rid of me now.”

“That was my plan all along, of course. Etienne isn’t even French.”

Áine snorts, then finds herself cracking up. “That was actually quite funny, Richard.”

“I suppose you’ve rubbed off on me.”

“Maybe I could _rub_ on you some more...tomorrow?”

Richard laughs at her lame innuendo. He really does have a nice laugh.

“It’s a date.”


End file.
